Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to client-server systems, and more specifically to pushing events to web pages at client systems used for interaction with applications at server systems.
Related Art
Web pages are the basis for accessing various types of information available on the world-wide-web. Typically, browser software executing on a client system receives a page definition and renders a web page (as a ‘page instance’) based on the specification present in the page definition.
Page instances are often used for interaction with applications. The applications are executed in server systems and the applications provide relevant content as a part of the rendered page instances. Users at the web browsers can request the content, view the content, update the content and traverse the content to access additional web pages.
Events are often generated while page instances are rendered at the client systems. An event is a change of state that occurs in server systems. State changes may include actions such as a change to data of interest, or when physical (hardware) or execution entities (threads, applications, etc.) change from one state to another, etc. A change to data of interest typically occurs when a new value is formed for a field (or data element) of interest, though actions such as deletion or addition of data elements also may be viewed as events in corresponding scenarios. Examples of change of status of an execution entity include, for example, completion of execution of a batch process.
There is often a need to notify occurrence of events to web pages presently being rendered. For example, assuming the users of a particular web page would be interested in the occurrence of a state change of interest, it may be desirable to notify such occurrences soon after they occur. As an illustration, assuming a value of a field is sent for display on a web page, and that a new value is generated for that field thereafter, it may be desirable to immediately propagate the change to the web page.
Pushing is a desirable approach to notifying of events to web pages presently being rendered. Pushing implies that the server system initiates transmission of the event to the web page, without waiting for corresponding request from the web pages. Pushing is desirable in that the approach avoids unneeded overhead of pull-based approaches where the browsers may periodically request updated information, without knowledge of whether or not such events had occurred.
Aspects of the present disclosure provide for pushing events to web pages used for interaction with applications.
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.